Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Is Madoff In The House?

Poor Christopher Balding is asking all the right questions, but the answers won't be forthcoming. With the passing of Dr Toh Chin Chye, only one surviving member of the old guard can unlock the secret. We can't be too sure if dad will allow sonny to have the keys to the car.

"To be clear there is no public record of expenditures by the Singaporean government to account for the $512 billion SGD in free cash flow since 1991. Nor is there a public record of assets held by Temasek, GIC, or other public body in large enough amount to account for such a large discrepancy. Remember if this $512 billion earned the 7% GIC claims to have earned there should be more than $1 trillion in assets."("The Mess That Is Singapore Part II", The Balding Blog)

If, as the professor asks, the Singapore government enjoyed free cash flow from budget surpluses and borrowing totaling S$512 billion between 1991 and 2002, where did the money go?

When Dr Chee Soon Juan raised the issue of Singapore's secretive US$10 billion loan-pledge to Suharto at a wet market in Jurong East during the hustings of GE 2001 (“Mr Goh! Mr Goh! Where is our money, Mr Goh?”), Goh Chok Tong, without saying a word, facetiously pointed to his pocket and waved his pesky questioners away. Election theatrics aside, Goh later said the issue referred to a US$10 billion loan offered to the Suharto government during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. The loan had conditions attached and was not taken up.

Last month, Singapore announced a contribution of US$4 billion to the International Monetary Fund. Under query in parliament, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong assured the public that the money will not come from the Government Budget, but from Official Foreign Reserves (OFR) held by the MAS. And where did MAS get their seed money in the first place, pray tell.

From the layman's perspective, why should good money be thrown after bad, especially when our own people need it more - to boost up wages for the lower income, build more affordable housing, repair a failing transport system, and reduce health care costs.

With so much money bandied around, it is a wonder that Singapore still has a high debt-GDP ratio. The truth is that our CPF savings is exchanged for pieces of paper called “special issues of Singapore Government Securities (SGS)”, a unique loan instrument afforded to the government. In other words, the CPF is the primary purchaser of the debt issued by the government of Singapore. Oh, we are supposed to get our retirement money back, with the pathetic 2.5% - if the monies are invested wisely. GIC and Temasek have boasted of 7% and 17% returns since inception. If their books are in order, we are back to the original question: where did the money go?

Ex-President Ong Teng Cheong asked that question once, and was informed by the Accountant-General that it would take "52 man-years" to produce just the list of physical assets of the Government (Government’s assets include both physical assets and financial assets). Now that we have a president related to the prime minister through family ties, will a better answer be forthcoming? Here's what the Ministry of Finance says:

MAS and Temasek already publish the size of the funds they manage. As of 31 March 2011, the Official Foreign Reserves managed by MAS was S$295 billion, and the size of Temasek’s portfolio was S$193 billion.

It is the size of the Government’s funds managed by GIC that are not published. What has been revealed is that GIC manages well over US$100 billion. Revealing the exact size of assets that GIC manages will, taken together with the published assets of MAS and Temasek, amount to publishing the full size of Singapore’s financial reserves.

It is not in our national interest to publish the full size of our reserves. If we do so, it will make it easier for markets to mount speculative attacks on the Singapore dollar during periods of vulnerability.

Further, our reserves are a strategic asset, and especially for a small country with no natural resources or other assets. They are a key defence for Singapore in times of crisis, and it will be unwise to reveal the full and exact resources at our disposal.

We’ve had a complete implosion of internal financial controls in the governmental apparatus. $3.3 trillion missing from government is a financial coup-d’etat. You can keep a bubble going as long as you can finance it. And my guess is, again very much credited to Bill Murphy, what we’re watching is a securities operation both with the Federal agencies, the mortgage agencies, and the U.S. Treasury, which are financing a political economy. The money that comes in from those debt operations are being used for other than their lawful purposes …Catherine Austin Fitts - America's Black Budget & Manipulation Of Markets - Thursday, 27 May 2004, 10:18 am - Column: Catherine Austin Fitts Mapping The Real Deal With Catherine Austin Fitts Audio Special - Financial Sense NewsHour - Radio & Net Talk Show Presenting - Catherine Austin Fitts w/ Jim Puplava - May 22, 2004 Webcast - America's Black Budget & the - Manipulation of Mortgage & Financial Markets

Their smoke and mirror finally attracts the attention of an academic. This is going to get interesting. I predict it will force Lee's hand (I seriously doubt many PAP ministers have a clue on this subject.) They will have to release more information due to pressure from inside and outside the Party, especially when the man is gone.

52 man-years is what it would take 52 men in one year, 104 men in 6 months or 208 men in 3 months, etc. What is 208 men spread out in a few Ministries ? I am sure the Govt could have provided Mr Ong Teng Cheong the answer if they had been sincere but obviously we can interprete that was not their intention.

So if some PM pilfered some of our national assets during their term of office, will the President or anybody be any wiser if there was no official list to begin with ? So why is this the case when we are told that the President's role is supposed to look after our national purse ?

The truth about where the money has gone will never be known. It is just like the same with the 2 plane accidents involving SIA. With people died, till now it's still a mystery. This government never believes in honesty to its people.

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation.Suddenly it all makes sense, why they keep harping on fertility rates, import lots of foreigners, extend the retirement age, postpone the CPF withdrawal dates. They are after the CPF from the working population. Without fresh CPF funds to feed the scam, the ponzi scheme is doomed to failure!

You left out 30 yrs loan to pay for a pigeon hole in the sky until they bankrupt your retirement savings! You are slave for 30 yrs of your working lifespan and left with nothing cuz of min sum and medisave! Every citizen except PRs escape their clutch.

They even suck you out from medical fee. Instead of affordable medical cost to citizen who had in their productive life time contributed to the welfare of the State and salary for the Ministers, they have to scrap their money pot to pay for the high medical fee. Even you have Medisafe and Medishield, most hospitalised cases require individual to come out cash, lots of cash.

"The government would not need to give me the dollar-and-cents value, just give me a listing of all the properties that the government owns. It took them a few months to produce the list. But even when they gave me the list, it was not complete. "

Remember that Ang Moh Aussie Goodyear supposed to take over Temasek. After he gone in to understudy, he decided to chicken out! Why? Have we wondered over this fact? What's the implication and signal? Common sense will tell you why. No need a brilliant mind to figure it out?

We were told (or rather our ex-President) that it wld take 54-man years to calculate the assets. The professor has said it is ridiculous and terrible management if true. So we need to question the elite's productivity here.

Secondly, the excuse that opening up the books we will be subject to speculative attacks is another bollocks. A managed fund/SWF in the likes of Norway etc should not unafraid of such possibility.

In short, ask yourself this question. Would you put ALL your money in one basket? The answer is clearly NO. So why do we have to give this govt (regardless which party runs it actually) all the carte blanch power to hide behind thick barrier walls so that they can go on with their clandestine activities with no check and balance, and most of all, accountability?

Wake up, and I urge all the smart finance & academics who care about singapore to ask the right and tough questions.

The last IMF holding reserve at end of 2011 has $905m according to MAS website. I wonder if this additional $4b is on top of that?

Why should taxpayer go bail out the financial woes brought upon by europeans when our own folks are struggling with rising cost of living, healthcare, food etc and low wages? Like human rights, can this goodwill to the international community put food on my table, as LKY famously said?

And did they pass this through the parliament before committing it to EU?

yep..notice after Singapore gave Mr bloomberg the LKY Best City award, there is now a segment show on Singapore either paid for or courtesy of Bloomberg tv. Some people on the white camp are so naive to think that these people gather round the tv studio and decided to go on mass media to sing singapore's praises. Pull out the STB advertising invoice and I'll show you where the money go towards!!

//And where did MAS get their seed money in the first place, pray tell.//

Maybe from this dead Ferrari driver, a "private investor" whose questionable wealth are suspected to have come from laundered ones in Hong Kong & Chongqing before the crackdown started by Bo Xi Lai. Rumor has it that the mafia and its siblings are probably all PRs & Singaporeans already. Perhaps why our government welcome them by boatloads. Somebody has to run and play at the casinos don't they.

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About Me

"There is nothing to prevent you from pushing your propaganda, to push your programme out either to the students or with the public at large... and if you can carry the ground, if you are right, you win. That's democracy. We're not preventing anybody" ~ Lee Kuan Yew, 31 January 2005